Share this

Read more!

Get our weekly email

Enter your email address

Last week’s Arab Summit in Doha was a fascinating
whirlwind of events. As I have argued elsewhere
despite many ups and downs and moments of intrigue the summit was considered to
be a rare success for an organisation famed for its inability to do just about
anything. The Syrian circus left town as
fast as it had arrived, and us Doha politicos await its inevitable return in
the coming months, with who knows what new developments.

The one thing that really stayed in my mind was not the Syrian question, but seven minutes during the closing press
conference of the summit when Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim (HBJ) went to
town on a seemingly unsuspecting journalist who had asked a question regarding
Qatar’s influence in Egypt. It was an absorbing piece of showmanship from
Qatar’s top diplomat.

The summit gave me a couple of opportunities
to observe HBJ up close, and love him or hate him, there is little doubt he has
a way of dealing with the media that few statesmen in the Arab world possess.
Smiling, always measured and in control, his command of English is strong
enough to crack jokes and to skirt around the edges of questions he doesn’t
like. His points can be bitterly acerbic at times but they are phrased in such
a way that it almost looks like he’s paying you a compliment.

So when the consummate showman dedicated
seven minutes of a half hour press conference about the Arab League to
answering a question about Egypt, it’s time to pay attention.

The problems stemming from the Qatari
Egyptian relationship have been all too evident in recent months, and to be
honest have not been that positive for the image of the Gulf Emirate. This
combined with a plethora of rumours, some of which originated from very
reputable media sources regarding Qatari mega-purchases of the Pyramids and the
Suez Canal.

HBJ took these accusations head on in his
usual style making jokes about the ridiculousness of the charges before
thrusting the poniard in to see off the allegation, “people say we were looking
to rent out the pyramids for $200bn, what kind of value for money is this,
maybe we’d consider it if it were $2bn” he joked, before saying “how many
baseless accusations are made against us?…like the Suez Canal, we have never
even considered buying the Suez Canal”.

Rumours swirled around Qatar recently that
the Royals had hired a big shot PR firm to distribute rumours about Qatari
mega-purchasing, essentially to get Qatar back into the world’s good books.
Rather than focus on Qatar’s assistance to rebels in Syria, and Libya, the
world should focus on the one thing about Qatar it does like, namely its money.
Big spending sprees on popular brands, shops and football clubs do far more for
the image of Qatar than their assistance to anti-regime forces across the
region.

I often wonder how rumours start in the
Gulf or in the Middle East in general, and why people are often so gullible as
to believe them in the complete absence of facts or evidence. Occasionally
mischievous reporting is clearly to blame, but the truth is usually far more
benign, the Chinese whispers in secretive societies goes into overdrive with
the tiniest fact growing and multiplying to a grossly bloated myth, with
Blackberry Messenger often the vector.

But here was HBJ trashing rumours about
Qatari big spending rather than playing them up. Clearly the rumours, if true,
are more limited in scope than Doha’s chattering classes might have us all
believe. But the refutation was more than simply an indication that the rumours
might be wrong, it was to try and set the record straight, and it is obvious
that the ruling elite has had enough of the accusations and decided to fight
back. The choice of timing presumably had to do with the fact that since it was
the Arab League Summit, it gave HBJ the biggest possible audience with some 100
journalists and TV networks present.

What happened last Tuesday evening was a
fascinating example of Qatar moving away from its traditional mode of silence
to address the problems it is facing. As ever we were treated to a big fanfare
and a summit, which is something Qataris like doing. But it wasn’t all show. I
doubt very much that HBJ had pre-planned the questions, at least it didn’t seem
that way from the way the press conference was handled, so on a spur of the
moment decision he took the bull by the horns and decided enough was enough.
This was I presume with the full backing of the Emir.

Sometimes it is easy to think that Qatar is interfering and expanding wherever it can, simply because it possesses
the means to do so. HBJ’s performance at the press conference clearly showed
that this is not the case. Qatar is becoming picky about when and where it
interferes.

Furthermore the Qatar-Egypt axis is fast
becoming the critical fulcrum by which Qatar is judged. Whether Qatar is able
to extricate itself from a very difficult foreign engagement that has caused it
numerous headaches remains to be seen. But one thing is for certain, less PR on
big spending and more offering of the facts is a good start.